


i'm a house on fire (and i wanna keep burning)

by thedeathchamber



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Conversations, Developing Relationship, Domestic, Episode Related, First Time, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Murder Husbands, POV Will Graham, Season/Series 02, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 17:52:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15054587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedeathchamber/pseuds/thedeathchamber
Summary: “Those are Dr. Bloom’s words. How wouldyoudefine our relationship, Will?”Will moistens his lips with the tip of his tongue as he considers his answer. “Intimate,” he says finally.“You have said you fantasize about killing me with your hands.”Will nods. “That would be… intimate.”Hannibal cocks his head half an inch to the side, fixing Will with an unwavering stare. “Do you wish to be intimate with me, Will?”-It's complicated.Or, Will and Hannibal explore andrenegotiateboundaries.





	i'm a house on fire (and i wanna keep burning)

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason I never got around to watching season 3 of Hannibal back in the day, so I went back and (binge) watched seasons 1 and 2 again, loved it just as much as the first time around, and... this happened. I don't know if anyone still reads Hannibal fic, but I had to get this out. Hopefully someone else can enjoy it. 
> 
> Off to finally, _finally_ watch season 3 now!
> 
> -
> 
> Alana's quote is from episode 10 in season 2. There's references to a couple other episodes, but let's imagine this takes place some time shortly after.

_Freddie isn't the only one without boundaries. Your relationship doesn't seem to know many. Patient and therapist. Friend and enemy. [...]_

_It's just hard to know where you are with each other.  
_

_*_

“What _are_ we, Dr. Lecter?” Will asks. “Patient and therapist? Friend and enemy?”

Alana’s comment had embedded itself in his mind, prickling, like a stubborn splinter. The explanation he had given her then was meaningless; there are too many variables: the fisherman and the Chesapeake Ripper, Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter—who are the same and not the same; what he tells Jack, what he tells Alana, what he tells Hannibal, what he tells himself... Will too yearns for a simple, fixed truth, but it eludes him.

Hannibal watches him from where he stands next to the fireplace, features blurred in the dim light. The fire, burning low in its grate, and the late hour, lend a drowsiness to the air, a sense of intimacy and familiarity that Will has grown used to in spite of himself. Will has his sleeves rolled up his forearms, the top buttons of his shirt undone—he stands exposed, open. Hannibal, as ever, is poised, serene, even without his suit jacket. But the sharp edges are dulled, like smudged charcoal. Will longs to coat his fingertips in it, to leave prints that will stain every surface in the room. He wants to leave a mark.

“Those are Dr. Bloom’s words," Hannibal replies. "How would _you_ define our relationship, Will?”

Will moistens his lips with the tip of his tongue as he considers his answer. “Intimate,” he says finally.

“You have said you fantasize about killing me with your hands.”

Will nods. “That would be… intimate.”

Hannibal cocks his head half an inch to the side, fixing Will with an unwavering stare. “Do you wish to be intimate with me, Will?”

Will takes a deep breath, staring into the fire behind Hannibal. “I want to… taste you,” he confesses. When he closes his eyes the flames burn on the inside of his eyelids. “I see you. I smell you. I hear your voice in my head. I know the touch of your skin.” When he looks back at Hannibal, he is limned in white gold light. “I want to know what you taste like.”

Hannibal’s lips twitch, darkness gathering in the left corner of his mouth. “I taste you with every breath,” he says, his tone matter-of-fact. “Sweet and sharp. Like fermenting wild berries.”

Will keeps tight control of his breathing, but he can smell Hannibal as he steps closer: expensive cologne and leather—and something underneath he doesn’t recognise yet, something than can only be made tangible through taste. He will have to reach out himself to put a name to it, he knows—Hannibal never _gives_ anything; he sets the table, a feast within his grasp, but the rest is up to Will.

He tests the give of the joints in his hands—hands that have killed a man, that hold an ache, deep in the bones, for more violence. He is hyperaware of his body, of the tick of the clock and the light patter of rain outside the house... of where Hannibal is standing, so close now that if Will stretched out his arm he could touch him.

“I want…” He has killed and mutilated for Hannibal. He has sat down before him and had his mind cracked open until it overflowed and spilled into his hands. He has had Hannibal inside him: the sharp points of antlers poking beneath his skin, and breaking through. This still feels like a line he shouldn’t cross.

“What is it that compels you?” Hannibal murmurs. “Curiosity? Or desire?”

Will has imagined what that voice would sound like straining against weight on his windpipe, mouth full of blood, rough and breathless with pain. Now he imagines pleasure too. He searches for an answer, feeling out the sharp edges of his teeth with his tongue. “A need for… completion.”

Hannibal considers for a moment. “The collector’s impulse," he determines. "The wish to gather all the pieces to complete a puzzle.”

Will gives a single nod in answer.

Hannibal doesn’t take his eyes off him as Will approaches him, only tilts his head back slightly, baring his throat, when Will stops in front of him: an offering. “Everything you want is at your fingertips; all you need do, is take,” he says.

And Will does. He raises a hand to Hannibal’s neck, running the pad of his thumb up the front of his throat to feel the sharp edges of bone and cartilage beneath the thin skin. He can almost feel the tear and crack of it as the rope wounds tighter, tighter. He trails up to cup his face, thumb pulling at the corner of his mouth briefly before settling under the arch of a high cheekbone.

He remembers Hannibal cradling his face in the barn. They had been as close then, heady with the metalic taste and scent of blood all around them, but nowhere to go, with the social worker on his knees in front of them and Peter waiting in distress. There are no distractions now. Nothing but the whisper of the crackling fire, and his own mind, drawing up reservations like water from a well. He thinks about how he killed Randall Tier with his bare hands, and about Hannibal dressing his wounds afterwards, knee and thigh brushing up against Will’s under the table. But then, Hannibal is constantly touching him—he is aware even if he had not wanted to acknowledge it—every gaze of his a caress.

Will leans in, keeping his eyes open. Hannibal holds his gaze for a moment before closing his own eyes, face relaxed. Will just looks at him for a moment: the thin, veined skin of his eyelids, the faint twitch of the eyeballs underneath. He imagines pressing his thumbs into the sockets until the flesh gave way in its cage of bone, then drops his eyes to Hannibal’s full, parted lips. Will has followed the flick of a tongue along the seam of that mouth a fair few times; stared, hypnotised, as words flowed from it like a poisonous cloud, intoxicating like a drug.

He closes the distance between them, pressing their lips together, his eyes closing without conscious thought. A brief touch, warm, and soft but for the barest scratch of stubble, before Will holds Hannibal’s jaw and _kisses_ him, lips moving steady and sure, and Hannibal responding: for every move from Will, a reaction. They break apart only to come together again—closer, deeper. The kiss doesn’t last long, but seems to go on forever, like time has slowed down, syrupy slow.

Kissing Alana had been a rush; the slip and slide of a car out of control on the ice. Kissing Hannibal is like being out in the water, in that minute of silence in the late afternoon as the sun begins to fade, nothing but the sound of the river, gentle and unbroken. Or maybe it's like being in the eye of a hurricane; in the calm before the storm hits.

When they separate, Hannibal smiles—Will feels the curve of his lips against his own right before they pull apart. He lets his hand fall, allowing himself to brush his palm down Hannibal’s front, catching the expansion of his chest for a single breath. He can’t help the pull of his own lips in a grimace, drawing air between his teeth in a faint whistle.

“Is this to join your list of regrets, Will?” Hannibal asks, calm as ever, unmoving.

Will thinks it through, licking his lips, savouring the missing puzzle piece, before he shakes his head no.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I have an answer,” he says in response. Hannibal tastes like strong coffee, scalding and bitter. The coffee Will takes with him when he goes fishing: brewed for too long, thick and sharp… yet ambrosial out in the cold. “It’s a taste that lingers, hiding in the spaces between your teeth.”

Hannibal hums low in his throat. “Is it the taste itself that offends you, or is it its permanence?”

Will follows the movement of his mouth as he talks before meeting his eyes again. “It's that you seem... _intent_ on lodging yourself deep in my brain, Dr. Lecter.”

A hint of a smile playing on his lips, Hannibal looks down, almost coy.

Will can't fool himself; Hannibal is already in his head. He is everywhere, in fact: he has seeped into every crevice, spread through the network of veins and arteries down to the finest capillaries right into the tissue. Will thinks of the gifts the Chesapeake Ripper had left for him—his courtship—and of Hannibal in their _conversations_ , pulling at threads, unravelling him... and freeing him in the process. He draws Hannibal into another kiss, gripping the back of his neck, and Hannibal goes, pliant.

Will keeps his hand where his neck meets his shoulder, feeling the warmth of Hannibal's skin over his shirt and vest.

“This too is a pleasure we can share,” Hannibal says, looking straight at Will.

Will breathes out a quiet laugh. “The last thing I need is more string to entangle myself with you, doctor.” More rope to hang himself.

Hannibal brushes his chin against the hand Will has on his chest. “And yet you hesitate."

Will drops his hand and takes a step back. He _is_ hesitating, but the temptation is strong, desire bubbling under his skin when before it had laid dormant.

“Are you afraid that for once what you _need_ may coincide with what you _want_?” Hannibal posits, “You are used to denying yourself. You have been denying yourself your whole life.”

Will feels the muscles in his face contort, tugging at a corner of his mouth. “Not with you."

Hannibal smiles again, moving closer, so they are back in each other’s space. Will doesn’t feel threatened, though—it’s not an invasion, but an invitation. “Not with me,” Hannibal echoes when Will meets his eyes again.

Will takes a slow, deep breath. He remembers a time when Hannibal stood at a distance, a figure carved out of wood—living yet dead. But the figure had taken life, and wrapped itself around him. Comforting like a blanket against the cold, it had seemed at first, before it turned into a straightjacket. It seeks now to embrace him, to pull him and Hannibal even closer. Sleeping with Hannibal would not be a simple physical act, but a communion: flowing in and out of each other, blurring the lines between them, leaving no space where he isn’t breathing in Hannibal, where Hannibal isn’t consuming him in turn.

“Will you start now?” Hannibal asks. He waits, still as a statue, until Will shakes his head, once to each side. Will has spilled blood, has had it leak from him and inside him, spreading beneath his own skin; he has a darkness and clarity in his mind he never had before in his life, because of Hannibal— _thanks_ to Hannibal.

“A taste isn’t enough,” he says, and Hannibal’s smile grows infinitesimally at Will’s words. “I'm afraid I may… develop an appetite.”

He hears Hannibal inhale, sharp and deliberate, before he reaches out to touch Will, cradling his face in both hands, gentle but firm. Will closes his eyes for the length of a breath, then opens them.

“You will not lose yourself with me. You will only find yourself, Will,” Hannibal murmurs.

Will tastes his name on Hannibal’s lips.

-

It feels like a dream—though not one of his regular nightmares—fluid and nebulous, overflowing in sensations, overwhelming the senses. Hannibal’s voice a constant: in reverential words, and in words that ignite a fire in Will, that fill him with scorching heat—but also his breath, stuttering and loud, inarticulate, as Will takes his pleasure from him, and gives it back. Caressing and clutching, aching to claw, to tear, to squeeze until everything stops. Revelling when it does, for a second—a minute, an age—just heat and pressure, and Hannibal beneath him, lips parted, and eyes never straying from Will, unresisting against the grip around his wrists, the pull on the scars where Will would have had him bleed out. He murmurs, indistinct, like a prayer, when Will seeks another taste—a new texture, a new pleasure and new ache, etching its path down his throat, planting a seed to take root in his stomach.

Hannibal settles his hand where it would grow when Will crawls up the bed to lay beside him—spent, sated. He stares at Hannibal under heavy eyelids until his breathing goes back to normal, then brings their lips together once again. Coffee is addictive.

“A new taste,” Hannibal comments, with a trace of humor in his voice. “There is no end to the delights that can be uncovered in the flesh. As there are no limits to the pleasures in the mind.”

Will runs a hand up Hannibal’s thigh, stomach, chest—where his hands have been before, his mouth—stickiness still caught in the webbing between his fingers, which burn with the new textures discovered in Hannibal’s body.

“When we come together,” Will supplies, completing Hannibal’s statement.

Hannibal smiles, showing his teeth, and lets out a quiet chuckle, which Will finds himself returning and echoing, tension falling loose from his body, left behind like an old snake skin.

“ _La petite mort_ … Death and life in one... Two becoming one.” Hannibal spreads his palm on Will’s chest, over his heart, which beats slow and steady.

They will do this again, Will knows. And again. Another secret to bring them closer together and farther from everyone else. It will stay a part of Will, indelible—not battle scars, but tokens of his relationship with Hannibal, complete at last. Patient and therapist, friend and enemy. Lovers.

“We are one,” Will whispers, entangling his fingers with Hannibal’s on his chest.

He can still taste him on his tongue. He doesn't think he'll ever be able to get rid of the taste.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sia's song 'House on Fire.'


End file.
